The U.N. must be reformed or replaced

The annual ritual when countries that have failed their citizenry through bad governance and worse economics gather to lecture and make demands of nations with truly representative leadership and successful economies will again commence when the General Assembly of the United Nations opens its seventieth session on September 15 in New York.

The opening of the session will be followed, in the second week, by the United Nations summit to adopt the post-2015 development agenda—a high-level plenary meeting taking place from September 25, through September 27—when world leaders are expected to agree to a new set of sustainability measures. The Assembly’s annual general debate, when Heads of State and Government and other senior national representatives gather to present their views about pressing world issues, will open on September 28, and run through October 5.

The United Nations Charter reaffirms “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women…” However, far too many members of that body utterly ignore that concept. Two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—China and Russia- regularly and substantially violate key tenets of the Charter. Over the decades since the document was first signed on June 26, 1945, far too many members have been admitted and remain who have no affinity with the concepts of individual rights, the equality of the sexes, or the principle of resolving international disputes through negotiation.

There is little doubt that vital issues currently affecting the world won’t be seriously addressed. Several examples of problems that will either be ignored or given little serious consideration:

the growing military threats and actions from Russia , China, Iran, and North Korea—(U.N. members all, China and Russia are members of the Security Council);
the enslavement and repression of Women in Islamic states;
the impoverishment of many national populations due to official corruption or the imposition of failed economic models;
the continued repression against Christians in China and the Middle East;
the growing trend of internet censorship.

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The philosophical dilemma facing the United Nations, in addition to the positions of power held by governments that have no affinity with the democratic principles of the organization, is an adherence to a moral equivalence, in which the attainment of a consensus is more important than insuring that justice prevails. The reality is that while nations that openly or in practice oppose basic concepts of individual rights, representative government, and nonaggression continue to hold significant positions of power and influence, the United Nations will not be a viable avenue to achieve worthwhile goals.

The time has come for nations that do practice the principles of open government and individual rights and nonaggression towards other countries, to consider whether the basic format of the United Nations is a viable platform for the international community to meet and work together.

How rational is it to give repressive regimes a voice on the U.N.’s Human Rights Council? Russia’s Mikhail Lebedev and China’s Yishan Zhang are 2016 members of that body. The Express-Tribune recently reported that Edward Snowden (the former U.S. intelligence contractor who controversially released significant amounts of sensitive U.S. data and is now living in Russia) has sharply criticizing Moscow’s deteriorating human rights record. Despite that, there is no question of Moscow’s continued membership in the U.N. Security Council, giving it a veto in any important decision the world body makes.

The anti-semitic tendencies of the U.N. are also an important problem. Despite the fact that Israel adheres more firmly to the organization’s charter than any of its regional neighbors, it is the Jewish state that is the subject of the most intense criticism.

A general forum in which all parties can meet and present their viewpoints is good and necessary. However, decision making should be the sole province of those who have truly adopted the principles of human rights and peaceful resolutions. The United Nations must either be reformed or replaced with a more viable organization led by states that truly practice the principles its charter espouses.

Quick Analysis

“Innocent Explanations” for Biden’s Willful Retention of Classified Materials?

“Down is up, up is down. Good is Wicked, Wicked is Good. The times are changing. This is what Oz has come to.” Danielle Paige, Wicked As we have discussed, the Report issued by Special Counsel Robert Hur states “[o]ur investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” Nonetheless, Hur concludes that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” In our last article, we examined one of the grounds for Hur’s decision not to recommend prosecution of Joe Biden; his finding that “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” Today, we analyze Hur’s decision to exonerate Biden despite the evidence for the President’s willful retention of classified materials while not in office. As described in Chapter 11 of the Report, “[i]n a recorded conversation on February 16, 2017, at Mr. Biden’s rental home in Virginia, Mr. Biden told Mark Zwonitzer (a writer working with Biden) that Mr. Biden had ‘just found all the classified stuff downstairs.’ According to what Mr. Biden told Zwonitzer, ‘all the classified stuff’ related to President Obama’s 2009 decision to surge American troops to Afghanistan, and to a pivotal moment when Mr. Biden sent President Obama his handwritten Thanksgiving memo opposing the troop surge. Photos of the Virginia home show that the lowest level ‘downstairs’-where Mr. Biden told Zwonitzer he had ‘just found all the classified stuff’-included rooms that Mr. Biden used as work and storage spaces.” (Citations omitted.) Hur goes on to claim that “Mr. Biden could have found the classified Afghanistan documents at the Virginia home in 2017 and then forgotten about them soon after.” Hur justifies this amazing assertion with his finding that “Mr. Biden’s memory…appeared to have significant limitations…[i]n his interview with our office, Mr. Biden…did not remember when he was vice president [and forgot]…when his son Beau died.” Hur admits that the “best case for charges would rely on Mr. Biden’s possession of the Afghanistan documents in his Virginia home in February 2017. when he was a private citizen and when he told his ghostwriter he had just found classified material.” However, in addition to the ludicrous “maybe he forgot” defense, Hur finds further reasons to decline to prosecute Biden for this allegation. According to Hur, “[w]hen Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter about finding ”all the classified stuff downstairs,’ his tone was matter-of-fact. For a person who had viewed classified documents nearly every day for eight years as vice president, including regularly in his home, finding classified documents at home less than a month after leaving office could have been an unremarkable and forgettable event.” Hur continues in this nonsensical vein; “Another viable defense is that Mr. Biden might not have retained the classified Afghanistan documents in his Virginia home at all. They could have been stored, by mistake and without his knowledge, at his Delaware home since the time he was vice president, as were other classified documents recovered during our investigation. This would rebut charges that he willfully retained the documents in Virginia.” But didn’t Biden himself say to Zwonitzer that he found the “classified stuff” in the basement of that same Virginia home? Hur has a preposterous answer for that question; “[J]urors may hesitate to place too much evidentiary weight on a single eight-word utterance to his ghostwriter about finding classified documents in Virginia, in the absence of other, more direct evidence…no witness, photo, email, text message, or any other evidence conclusively places the Afghanistan documents at the Virginia home in 2017.” As if this analysis wasn’t incredible enough, Hur adds that “[i]n addition to this shortage of evidence, there are other innocent explanations for the documents that we cannot refute. When Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter he ‘just found all the classified stuff downstairs,’ he could have been referring to something other than the Afghanistan documents.” The report concludes tomorrow Illustration: Pixabay

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